Campus placement at the IIMs (IIM Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bangalore and Calcutta), and top B-schools such as XLRI, IIFT, MDI has started on a strong note with almost all the students of class of 2018 finding jobs within days!

The news of ‘final placements’ at the top B-schools have started to emerge, and it is very positive. As usual, many top b-schools were able to place their entire batch within days, in what appears to be a possible revival in the management hiring sentiments among the corporates. Additionally, there were increased international offers as well as from IT/ITeS and E-commerce sectors.

At XLRI - Xavier School of Management, 132 recruiters doled out 370 job offers for 358 students of PGDM-BM and PGDM-HRM. The average salaries offered were Rs. 20.1 lakh per year. Public Sector companies such as GAIL, IOCL and HPCL hired in large numbers.

At Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad (IIM A), the final placements are conducted in clusters; the Cluster 1 hiring is scheduled on 10th February, Cluster 2 on 13th February and Cluster 3 on 16th February. The institute will follow a rolling process after the Cluster 3, if required. Accenture Strategy (17) and BCG (15) were the top recruiters during the Cluster 1. Consulting, Finance and Investment and Private Equity companies were among those who participated.

At IIFT New Delhi, it took fewer recruiters to place the entire batch. The institute’s international job postings jumped 55% to 31; Capgemini, CBC, Hexaware, IBM and Wipro IT made 33 offers at IIFT, compared with last year’s 25. At Indian Institute of Management - Udaipur (IIM Udaipur), the total number of international offers stood at 11, up from 8 last year. IT/ITeS hiring at the institute increased to 39 from 16 last year.

IT/ITeS and E-commerce have shown resurgence in their MBA hiring. According to Mr. Manav Jain, AVP – Paytm, the company is set to hire about 60-70 MBA graduates for Paytm Mall. Mr. Sayan Dutta, Head - University Relations at Amazon also echoed similar sentiments about hiring MBA talent as ‘we scale up our operations in India’. Mr. Babu Vittal, Head – HR at ShopClues, the company is likely to hire more than 30 management graduates.

While, positive at the IIMs and the top b-schools, the placements sentiments may not necessarily reflect the sentiments in the entire job-market in India. Still, the signs are pretty encouraging for 2018. According to Mr. V. Suresh, CSO – Naukri.com, “Looks like there is a slow and steady revival of the job market… sectors like banking, financial services and insurance, auto, engineering and industrial products continue to sustain the momentum gained over the past few months”.

The India Skills report released by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), PeopleStrong and Wheebox, projected a higher hiring intent in 2018.

With inputs from the Times of India, Livemint, Economic Times, Business Line and International Business Times.